Cold Comfort Farm, DH Lawrence, and English Literary Culture Between the Wars.doc

1 faye hammill as published in modern fiction studies 47 4 winter 2001 831 854 cold comfort farm dh lawrence and she is evidently conscious of this because she remarks that she hopes to collect material for a novel while she is there her entirely accurate preconceptions about her starkadder relatives are derived from her reading of novels very different from those of jane austen she is excited at the prospect of meeting a doomed family and discovering a gloomy mystery 58 and she expects her second cousins to be named seth and reuben because highly sexed young men living on farms are always called seth or reuben and my cousin s name remember is judith that in itself is most ominous her husband is almost certain to be called amos and if he is it will be a typical farm 23 she makes explicit her literary source for these ideas when she remarks on discovering the tyranny of her great aunt ada doom otherwise mrs starkadder so that was what it was mrs starkadder was the curse of cold comfort mrs starkadder was the dominant grandmother theme which was found in all typical novels of agricultural life it was of course right and proper that mrs starkadder should be in possession at cold comfort flora should have suspected her existence from the beginning 57 flora functions as a reader as well as a character within the narrative commenting on the story as it progresses and relating it to the patterns and conventions of the books she has read although gibbons does not identify any novels of agricultural life by name there are clear indications as to which authors she is parodying and a rehearsal of her sources gives an idea of her range of reference in the 1920s and early 1930s she reviewed new rural fiction for the evening standard and for a journal of country life the lady thereby gaining a wide knowledge of the genre two of the most popular regional writers of the period were sheila kaye smith and mary webb and many aspects of the plot characterization and setting of cold comfort farm can be traced to their work for example aunt ada doom is based on mrs velindre in webb s the house in dormer forest 1920 and the description of the farmhouse at cold comfort parodies webb s portrait of dormer house the original for flora s cousin reuben who is obsessed with his ownership of farmland can be found in kaye smith s sussex gorse 1916 while gibbons s imaginary calvinist sect the quivering brethren refers specifically to the colgate brethren in kaye smith s later novel susan spray 1931 and more generally to the presence in many rural novels of old testament theology and 3 belief in a vengeful god gibbons also parodies the prose style of these two novelists finding especially rich sources in kaye smith s purple passages the anthropomorphized cows plants and porridge in cold comfort farm mock the emphasis on man s intimate connections with the natural world which is characteristic of primitivist writing and which is often expressed through the use of the pathetic fallacy all mary webb s landscapes for example function as metaphors for human passions see barale 88 100 151 the pathetic fallacy is similarly used in the work of jc powys and of dh lawrence both of whom were influenced by primitivist thinking for the contemporary reader dh lawrence is the most easily identifiable of gibbons s targets and he is particularly important to a reading of her work because she not only parodies his prose style but also satirizes his ideas about gender and sexuality among the many details in cold comfort farm which point to lawrence are the incestuous desire of judith for her son seth which links her with gertrude morel in sons and lovers 1913 and the name of seth s mistress meriam which recalls paul morel s lover miriam as for jc powys there is a certain gothic dimension to his sussex novels which is parodied in gibbons s dark secrets and gloomy mysteries also the critic wj keith identifies a reference to tf powys s mr weston s good wine in cold comfort farm keith 175 and stella gibbons s nephew and biographer reggie oliver emphasizes the importance of the powys brothers among the sources for cold comfort farm 2 oliver also enumerates some of the third rate novels which stella gibbons received to review or pr cis while she was working for the lady and he makes particular mention of gay agony 1930 by one h a manhood the names for gibbons s characters micah and amos were probably borrowed from gay agony and oliver s quotation from manhood sufficiently demonstrates that novels such as this formed part of the inspiration for cold comfort farm rain had come like a belated passion daylight seemed no more than a pale reflection surviving from some past day hissing screens obscured the moor breaking against the windows of the black smock with a sound suggestive of the birth of thorns qtd in oliver 142 a further possible source for cold comfort farm is ethan frome 1911 edith wharton s tragic story of rural poverty and doomed love in a brief article jackie vickers lists a number of 2 oliver s biography sets out the connections between gibbons s novel and the work of jc powys and he later commented i may not have perhaps have placed enough emphasis on the powys brothers particularly jc as a source for her parody letter to the author dated 15 july 2000 see oliver 112 119 for a discussion of the sources of cold comfort farm i am very grateful to reggie oliver for invaluable help with my research and for the excellent material provided in his book 4 striking correspondences between the two novels which constitute persuasive evidence that gibbons had wharton in mind alongside the british regional writers tauba r heilpern in an unpublished essay on cold comfort farm makes a case for including eugene o neill s play desire under the elms 1924 among gibbons s influences both books heilpern argues emphasize the sinister influence of nature on human life and include motifs of divine retribution and incest as with wharton the evidence is fairly convincing but in a letter to ms heilpern about her sources stella gibbons said she did not consciously parody o neill 3 mention should also be made of hugh walpole whose four lake district romances appeared between 1930 and 1933 and were modelled on the novels of walter scott although there are no obvious similarities between walpole s four herries chronicles and cold comfort farm the foreword to gibbons s novel parodies a pompous dedication with which walpole prefaced one of his books raymond williams in the country and the city suggests that instead of comparing cold comfort farm with its obvious early twentieth century forbears it ought really to be read side by side with say wuthering heights adam bede tess of the d ubervilles 253 he does not argue that gibbons parodies these authors but that she shares some of their preoccupations in terms of the tension of an increasingly intricate and interlocking society and the changes of urbanism and industrialism 253 however in the cases of hardy and bronte there is a certain amount of evidence that gibbons deliberately included them among her targets she mentions wuthering heights at one point and two of the characters in cold comfort farm the incredibly ancient servant adam and the religious bigot amos have similarities to emily bronte s character joseph the connection to thomas hardy is stronger since he too makes heavy use of the pathetic fallacy and some of gibbons s nature descriptions are definitely reminiscent of those in his 1887 novel the woodlanders see ariail 66 67 gibbons also exaggerates hardy s dependence on coincidence in his fictional plots by including a great many improbable coincidences in her own and her choice of the name elfine for the starkadder daughter points to elfride in hardy s a pair of blue eyes 1873 the relationship with eliot is less obvious but according to gladys mary coles who approached gibbons about her sources miss gibbons has confirmed that she was satirising the rural tradition in the work of many authors including emily bronte george eliot hardy dh lawrence the powys brothers and sheila kaye smith as well as mary webb and also the numerous minor country novelists of the early nineteen thirties coles mary webb 150 151 coles uses this information to defend webb against the charge 3 i am grateful to tauba heilpern for this information and for permission to draw on her research 5 of being the main target of gibbons s attack while webb s other biographer dorothy wrenn states rather proudly that webb s the house in dormer forest was the inspiration for cold comfort farm 68 these contrasting approaches reflect differing assessments of the purpose and impact of gibbons s parody according to coles cold comfort farm dealt a severe blow to the genre of the rural novel and it effectively damaged mary webb s reputation but not immediately the sales of her books since it helped to reinforce among academic critics and intellectuals an antipathy towards her work flower of light 326 wrenn by contrast argues cold comfort farm is a very entertaining book and well worth reading so is the house in dormer forest to obtain the maximum amount of pleasure from each of them read both one after the other 68 a further reason for this divergence is that wrenn s focus is on the pleasure of reading webb whereas coles s is on webb s critical reputation in the light of coles s argument it is somewhat ironic that critics and intellectuals also seem to have an antipathy towards stella gibbons it is possible that this antipathy derives in part from the low critical standing of some of the authors she parodies mary webb is not widely read or taught today nor are kaye smith the powys brothers or walpole 4 certain commentators have argued that the canonical status of a parody is largely dependent on the status of its target works for examples see rose 39 122 and wj keith applies this argument to gibbons s novel cold comfort farm was an immense success in its time inevitably however its point has been blunted by the decline of the genre that it helped to dislodge many of its finer points will be lost on modern readers and some of its implications need to be spelled out in detail 175 this may be partially true but there are two counter arguments to be advanced firstly the most recognizable target of cold comfort farm dh lawrence still holds a central position in the canon of english fiction as of course do hardy eliot and bronte secondly it is demonstrable that gibbons s parody still functions effectively even though the fashion for regional fictions is so far behind us it is certainly true that few readers today will be able to put a name to all gibbons s sources or recognize the specificity of her jokes as they apply to individual authors however the parody is ultimately directed at a fashionable genre rather than an individual and as margaret rose explains the dual structure of parody allows it to keep both its target and its own parodic function alive stella gibbons s cold comfort farm for instance is still 4 the reputation of the women rural writers has been bolstered somewhat by the republication of kaye smith s susan spray and joanna godden 1921 and mary webb s precious bane 1925 in the virago modern classics series but in the oxford and cambridge companions to english literature the entries for kaye smith and webb refer to cold comfort farm implying that the primary reason for remembering these authors is as the targets of gibbons s parody 6 comic even if one does not know the specific works it parodies because its parody of those works has evoked them for the reader while making fun of them by exaggerating their peculiarities 122 rose rejects the contention that a parody will no longer be recognized as such once its originals have been forgotten and argues that parody s ambivalence derives from its ability to criticise and renew its target as a part of its own structure 41 this can be applied to gibbons in that she recreates the primitivist novels within her text and inscribes their conventions onto her work thereby ensuring their continued existence for example the women rural novelists often relied on victorian style melodramatic plots revolving around family hatreds ancient houses and violent elemental interventions trodd 104 these plots dated rapidly causing the novels to fall out of fashion while lawrence and hardy continued to be widely read cold comfort farm parodies rural melodrama by setting up two mysteries in the novel what happened in the woodshed and what are the unspecified rights which judith and ada attribute to flora gibbons declines to solve either of these mysteries except by hinting that the explanations are entirely trivial and yet some of the interest of her narrative depends on the reader s curiosity about them thus cold comfort farm situates itself in a somewhat contradictory position both in the tradition of rural writing and also outside it commenting on it from a position of ordinary common sense this positioning is typical of parodic texts gibbons depends on the traditional structures of the agricultural novel the family feuds the isolated setting the landscape description the gloomy mysteries but she also critiques the use of these motifs in the texts she parodies many of her jokes can only be fully appreciated by a reader familiar with a number of novels by half a dozen rural writers and in this way gibbons seems to be addressing a reader who is an avid consumer of rural fictions yet through her mockery of those fictions she constructs a reader who shares her scepticism about primitivist writing a further ambivalence inheres in gibbons s relationship with the concepts of literature and literariness and this again can be discerned through attention to the kind of reader which is constructed by the text gibbons s many intertextual references and subtle parodic and satiric strategies seem to address themselves to a sophisticated highly educated and widely read audience but her criticism of the literary establishment is evidently directed towards a reader of common sense who distrusts elites the author s foreword to the novel provides the first indication of this tension i 7 found after spending ten years as a journalist learning to say exactly what i meant in short sentences that i must learn if i was to achieve literature and favourable reviews to write as though i were not quite sure what i meant but was jolly well going to say something all the same in sentences as long as possible 7 this implies that literature is defined according to the rather arcane tastes of an elite who have sufficient power to influence literary fashions her reference to journalism is glossed by the english studies group at the birmingham centre for contemporary culture studies in their article on 1930s fiction the middlebrow novel takes journalism as its model cold comfort farm ironically disclaims any pretensions to literary status a disclaimer entirely characteristic of middlebrow writing 14 15 gibbons s foreword is addressed to one anthony pookworthy esq and pookworthy represents hugh walpole whom gibbons once interviewed according to reggie oliver she saw in walpole not only an over rated writer with an unduly high opinion of himself but the representative of a smug self congratulatory literary establishment 76 the letters she puts after pookworthy s name abs llr stand for associate back scratcher and licensed log roller clearly indicating that she perceives the literary establishment as exclusive and somewhat corrupt gibbons s ridiculing of the literary elite firmly aligns her novel with a middlebrow or commonsense position and this is reinforced by the fact that cold comfort farm was published not by one of the elite publishers such as cape hogarth chatto or faber but by longmans it was reprinted in 1938 by penguin which was by then the most successful of the new distinctively middlebrow publishing ventures english studies group 14 gibbons s choice of a sustained comic mode also functions to align her work with the middlebrow since she employs comedy to ridicule certain unambiguously literary texts and to articulate a common sensical outlook in opposition to them her use of humour as a method of highlighting the failings of the rural novel is particularly effective in the light of the humorlessness of her originals she writes in her dedicatory foreword you see tony i have a debt to pay your books have given me joy it is just possible that it was not the kind of joy you intended them to give but it was joy all right i have more than once hesitated before the thought of trying to repay some fraction of my debt to you by offering you a book that was meant to be funny for your own books are not funny they are records of intense spiritual struggles staged in the wild setting of mere berg or fen your characters are ageless and elemental things tossed like straws on the seas of passion you paint nature at her rawest in man and in landscapes the only beauty that lights your pages is the grave peace of fulfilled passion 8 8 the age old hierarchy of tragedy over comedy persists to a certain degree in many literary histories and this may be a further reason why cold comfort farm is not admitted to the ranks of literature further as reggie oliver points out gibbons s tendency to eschew the artistic functions of subversion and questioning and instead attempt to amuse elevate inspire even comfort through her writing was unfashionable in the interwar years oliver suggests that her warm and optimistic attitude went against the grain of modernism 124 and that this has affected assessments of the importance of her writing a second mention of book reviewers in gibbons s foreword suggests that their discriminations between literature and non literary writing are fairly spurious it is only because i have in mind all those thousands of persons not unlike myself who work in the vulgar and meaningless bustle of offices shops an